Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann

The histories of many men who have risen to eminence in some particular branch of science teach us that they have done so under the most unfavorable circumstances, and in spite of the greatest obstacles. They are thrown in their way by fortune and by their own natural guardians. Samuel Hahnemann belonged to this class of great men.

· Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (10 April 1755 – 2 July 1843) was a 19th century German physician and chemist, known for creating an alternative form of medicine called homeopathy.

· Born in Meissen, Saxony in Germany on 10^th April 1755 to an impoverished middle-class family.

· He was the third child [of five] and eldest son of an industrious painter and designer of porcelain.

· His studies including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, History, Physics, botany, and medical science and on graduation from Princely School of Arfa, wrote his first thesis is Latin "The wonderful construction of the Human Hand".

· At age 20, he enrolled in the University of Leipzig by attending lectures of medicine in the day and translating books at night and tutoring to earn money to support him.

· At the age of twenty-two, Hahnemann was master of Greek, Latin, English, Italian, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Spanish, Chaldaic and off course German.

· He also trained in sciences, was a member of various scientific societies and was honored especially for his researches in chemistry.Other fields of expertise included botany, astronomy and meteorology.

· He graduated MD at the University of Erlangen on 10 August 1779, qualifying with honors.

· In 1781, Hahnemann took a village doctor’s position in the copper-mining area of Mansfeld, Saxony.

· Still fascinated with science, especially chemistry, Hahnemann further immersed himself in the study of pharmacy after his move to Dessau in 1781.

· There, he met Johanna Henrietta Leopoldina Kuchler. The two were married December 1, 1782, and settled in Gommern and started clinical practice, where they welcomed the first of 11 children in 1783.

· In 1784 he published the Original book on treatment of scrofulous sores. At this time when little attention was paid to hygiene, Hahnemann devoted considerable space for it.

· Hahnemann took his calling as a medical healer seriously and applied himself conscientiously to his profession.

· In these early years as a doctor, using the medicines and techniques available to the profession at the time, he found to his dismay that he was not only ­not achieving a healing response in many of his patients, but in some cases causing greater damage to the health of the patient through the toxic effects of some of the medicines, than the disease, if left untreated, would have caused.

· This tragic fact made such a profound moral impression on him, that he felt compelled to withdraw from the profession in order to not contribute to the harm being committed to humanity in the name of medicine.

· Hahnemann then resorted to making a living from writing and translation

· It was while undertaking the translation of a particular medical text, A Treatise on the Material Medica by the Scottish physician William Cullen, that he was first prompted to examine the medicinal effects of substances ‘under a different light.’

· In this medical text he read the claim that the drug, cinchona (Peruvian bark), was effective in treating the symptoms of malaria because it was a bitter astringent and had a tonic effect on the stomach.

· In order to establish exactly what effects cinchona did have on the human organism he decided to take the drug himself.

· He began to administer doses of cinchona to himself over a short period of time and discovered that this bark actually created malaria-like symptoms in a healthy individual.

· Hahnemann reasoned that it was the similarity of symptoms that somehow produced the healing effect. This prompted the postulation of the first principle of homoeopathy: “like cures like.”

· Or stated more completely: That which can produce a set of symptoms in a healthy individual, can treat a sick individual who is manifesting a similar set of symptoms.

· He coined the name “homoeopathy” to describe this approach to healing, deriving it from the Greek: homos (same) + pathos (suffering).

· In the 19th century Hahnemann developed a theory, propounded in his 1803 essay On the Effects of Coffee from Original Observations that many diseases are caused by coffee. Hahnemann later abandoned the coffee theory in favour of the theory that disease is caused by Psora.

· In early 1811 Hahnemann moved his family back to Leipzig with the intention of teaching his new medical system at the University of Leipzig. As required by the university statutes, to become a faculty member he was required to submit and defend a thesis on a medical topic of his choice.

· On 26 June 1812, Hahnemann presented a Latin thesis, entitled "A Medical Historical Dissertation on the Helleborism of the Ancients."

After a long career as a medical practitioner, researcher, writer and lecturer, Hahnemann died in 1843 at the age of 88 in Paris, after having completed his 6^th and final edition of the Organon, referring to it in a letter to his publisher as his “most nearly perfect work.”